Google phone just a step toward Net-advertising dominance

The rumors of Google's plans to release an Internet-optimized, BlackBerry-like device have not only created quite a buzz; they've been confirmed, at least according to some reports.

"According to Nomura phone analyst Richard Windsor, the company has confirmed the project. 'Google has come out of the closet at the CeBIT trade fair admitting that it is working on a mobile phone of its own,' he said in a note. 'This is not going to be a high-end device but a mass market device aimed at bringing Google to users who don't have a PC,'" directtraffic.org reports.

Meanwhile, engadget.com also claims to have new info about the device, which it refers to as the Google Switch. The site even includes what could be a screen image of the phones contact program.

Google corporate, however, continues to neither confirm nor deny the report.

Still, that Google will deliver a phone is a possibility, and the question remains: "Why would Google want to mess with the phone business?"

Dan Nystedt at the IDG News Service posed the question the other day, and came up with this: "The commentaries have been mostly about rumors, and they lack a good motive for such a move. Google makes software, not hardware, and rumors that it was developing a PC a few years back turned out to be wrong -- it was simply making software for PCs."

Well, I have a different perspective, with all due respect to Mr. Nystedt. Google wants to make a Google-y phone for the same reason it wants to give free WiFi to Mountain View, San Francisco, and -- as observed in a fascinating article on Daily Wireless -- perhaps the entire nation.

The Daily Wireless article lists eight signs that Google is planning to build a national wireless network. Among them (and in addition to the free WiFi in Mountain View and offer to San Fran), the article notes that: Google is investing heavily in dark fiber (dark fiber has such an ominous ring to it. I bet the Death Star was laden with that stuff); it's investing in power-line based broadband technology; and it's planting datacenters left and right.

So then: If Google is sowing the seeds for a nationwide wireless network -- perhaps even a free one -- why would it do so? The company could launch such a venture under the guise of delivering knowledge to the people, and perhaps that truly is part of the Google ambition. But it certainly wouldn't just be a charitable endeavor. Google surely realizes that the more people in the U.S. (and beyond) who get online and use Google services, the more money Google makes through advertising. And what better way to generate more Net users, AKA ad-clickers, then giving away wireless service to the masses?

Internet-ad revenue is, after all, Google's bread and butter, and the company is introducing more and more ways to deliver targeted ads aimed squarely at your cerebral cortex via your eyeballs. Do a Google search for info; get an ad. Do a Google Maps search for, say, pizza; get an ad. Check your Gmail; get an ad. Access files via Google Apps; get an ad. Hop over to YouTube (which Google bought last year); get an ad. Log in to an online game, and soon enough, I expect you'll find Google-delivered ads, because Google recently scooped up AdScape, an in-game advertising startup.

Of course, the notion of offering free Internet access, essentially paid for by advertisers, isn't a new one. You may recall that NetZero gave it a whirl back in the early days of the Internet Age. Alas, the venture was a flop, arguably because the Net had yet to prove itself as a successful medium for businesses to advertise to consumers. Thus, the company couldn't support the infrastructure and deliver a useful, reliable service.

But now we know just how lucrative the world of Internet advertising is. Suddenly, NetZero's original business model looks quite viable, though updated to the current state of the Internet Age.

And Google can certainly afford to build up a wireless Internet infrastructure and deliver Net access, gratis, along with delivering all the fabulous aforementioned services, just like NBC and ABC and other major TV stations can bring you daily programming for free. The cost of the hardware and development is all paid for through advertising.

So there you have it. Google can practically hand out Google-optimized smart phones through which you and I can access the free wireless GoogleNet to partake in just about any (Google-delivered) service we might want or need, from e-mail and calendar to maps to entertainment like streaming video -- again, for free.

OK, so not entirely free. If that above scenario were to play out, and you're a business that depends on Net advertising, you may find that Google really is the only company that can bring your message to the masses, and you'll really have no choice but to pay a premium for that privilege.

And personally, I still find it all just a little bit troubling.

A Google phone with ads is beyond the pale

There was an old ad campaign that went something like, "It's not nice to fool with mother nature." And I believe the perpetrator of this crime was quickly zapped by lightening.

Google's rumored Google phone, which will offer consumers free cell phone service, subsidized by placing text or voice advertising on the phone, puts this saying in mind.

To most Americans, their cell phone is a personal device that they do not want messed with.

It is hard enough, especially for those of us who remember the old monopolistic days of Ma Bell, when phones just worked, to get used to lousy cell phone service, let alone listening to ads every time we dial.

And 3G service still isn't all it's cracked up to be. Imagine not only having to wait for your content to appear on the screen but waiting first for the ad to appear and go away before you view the content you want?

Worse still, what about a 911 call? Will you have to listen to an ad before you speak to the emergency dispatcher?

No way.

A cell phone is no longer a "nice to have" device. It is the most important lifeline and communications tool we have.

Google makes a big mistake if it doesn't give it the respect and deference it deserves.

I think this time Google may be biting off more than it can chew. Yes, what it's after is more platforms on which to sell advertising. After all, it's Google's main -- at this point, only -- revenue stream.

But consumers, believe it or not, have their limits, and I think they will draw the line at commercials on their mobile.

Comments

Gmail generates revenue through contextual text advertisements, not "commercials". They are more effective and less intrusive than advertisements on other competing services. But people said similar things about gmail advertisements before gmail took off.

People would gladly look at search results and advertisements generated from location based searches. That would generate revenue.

There could be a combination of customer payment and advertisement revenue.

People want google services on their mobile devices. The main possible complaint may be about privacy with regard to GPS and call records. That is a problem already, and Google could likely allow people to opt out of certain personalizing/contextualizing features.

Google won't put "commercials" on peoples' phones.

"No way" to your irrelevant straw man.

What a silly argument you have. I'm going to go send an email from gmail. Sure beats the crappy Hotmail interface with it's comparatively annoying advertisements. Not to mention the clunky Blackberry web interface, which is not integrated with an entire web platform like Google services.

I don't think Google is perfect, but HAHA to your article/post.

Report: Google shows phone prototype to manufacturers

Google has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail, and Web browser software applications, according to a story published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.

Google is showing the prototype to cell phone manufacturers and network operators as it continues to hone the technical specifications that will allow the phone to offer a better mobile Web browsing experience than current products, the story said.

Google declined to comment on the report of the prototype but confirmed that it is working with partners to expand its software applications from the traditional Internet to mobile devices.

"We're partnering with carriers, manufacturers, and content providers around the world to bring Google search and Google applications to mobile users everywhere," Google spokesman Michael Kirkland said.

"What our users and partners are telling us is that they want Google search and Google applications on mobile, and we are working hard every day to deliver that," Kirkland said.

The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider: Apple's iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least $499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T service plan.

Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.

"I don't know how successful it's going to be. The model of an ad-supported wireless Web has not been successful over the past 10 years," he said, referring to municipal Wi-Fi networks that offer free Internet connections to users willing to view advertisements while they surf the Web.

"The average adult who can afford a cell phone is not going to want to listen to ads. So this is mainly for teenagers, twenty-somethings, high schoolers or people who can't afford a phone," said Kagan.

Industry watchers have long heard rumors that Google was designing its own mobile phone. Google added fuel to that speculation in July when it announced it was willing to spend $4.6 billion to buy wireless spectrum in a U.S. Federal Communications Commission auction.

At the same time, an increasing number of industry newcomers have made bids to enter the market, such as Apple with the iPhone and Disney, which launched a wireless version of its ESPN cable sports channel that ultimately failed.

"We see the cell phone industry continuing to evolve," Kagan said. "We're still going to see traditional handsets, but the Apple iPhone was a brand-new category in wireless, and it wasn't from a handset vendor and wasn't from a network."

Google's success in its venture will depend largely on the details it is still defining with its manufacturing and network partners, and whether customers are willing to trade user fees for intrusive advertising, he said.

"There are a lot of unknowns, but generally speaking, it hasn't worked yet," said Kagan.

LG's KU580 Google phone to launch in Europe

The phone comes pre-installed with mobile services from Google, giving one-click access to Google’s search engine, as well as Gmail and Google maps.

LG spokesperson Choi Jun-Hyuk said: "We will sell our new 3G Google phones this week in five European countries - Italy, France, Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic. The phone will allow users to easily search for information, find locations and manage email".

The phones offers a 2-inch display screen, a camera, FM radio reception and Bluetooth.

There have been rumours about Google developing specific mobile phone software and even possibly a Google branded handset on the wires for a while now, for a time rival company Samsung was favourite for the partnership.

LG signed a deal with Google in April, and more Google-flavoured handsets are expected to be launched as a result.

Judging from the picture, it looks like this new moby will be coming to Vodafone...

iPhone's accelerometer can be used in 3rd party apps?

Apple is one lucky company to have all those fans making iPhone apps without an official SDK. Now, a guy claims he has figured out how to use the iPhone’s accelerometer in applications. What follows is the short video demoing some wacky stuff and games, which use the accelerometer for controlling objects on the screen. On the second though, this might be the pre-recorded video and such things are still not possible. Who knows…

UPDATE: It seems this is the real thing. The guy who made this video posted the source code!

[Via: Gizmodo]

GPhone Rumor "Confirmed" Again

The 'yes it's here', 'no it isn't', 'yes it is' tennis match of rumors about a Google-powered mobile phone have been entertaining to watch, as yet another source swears on the immaculate souls of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn souls that the GPhone is alive and on the way.

GPhone Rumor "Confirmed" Again

As each Google Phone rumor makes the rounds, you can't help but think Elvis and JFK will show up on the front of the Wall Street Journal texting each other with them.

The latest absolute stone-cold GPhone rumor appeared on the blog of Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, who says what he's got comes from an inside source at the impenetrable Googleplex, where staffers physically assault photographers trying to take picture of people playing Twister at a party on their campus:

I talked to one of my inside sources at Google today. He spoke on conditions of anonymity, but the guy is someone I trust implicitly. He said that he was baffled at Google's apparent internal confusion on the GPhone issue - that they've actually demo'ed the thing in public before.

He said that the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone, and the thought process behind it's functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this.

Hopkins has received some flack in his blog comments from people who aren't convinced of his post's veracity. We're much more interested in a Google network that would back a Google phone, rather than the hardware, but for now we're happy to mention another story about the GPhone.

Google Phone, New Ad Platform

The tech world is buzzing with rumors about a Google phone. The Wall Street Journal ran an article today, quoted at SearchEngineLand, that provides some details of the development process. Apparently, Google is taking a two-pronged approach: developing their own handset, but at the same time opening up the specifications to allow other manufacturers to offer compatible phones. And, unlike Apple’s iPhone, the Google Phone (GPhone?) should be available from multiple wireless companies.

[Google] is drafting specifications for phones that can display all of Google’s mobile applications at their best, and it is developing new software to run on them. The company is conducting much of the development work at a facility in Boston, and is working on a sophisticated new Web browser for cellphones, people familiar with the plans say…

Google is hoping that multiple operators will offer its phone. And Google is ready to relinquish some control over design, allowing manufacturers to create devices based on a common set of specifications. Google has approached several wireless operators in the U.S. and Europe in recent months, including AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, people familiar with the situation say. T-Mobile USA, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, appears to be the furthest along in considering it, these people say. Andy Rubin, who helped design T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick phone, now works at Google and is involved in its handset project. [From the WSJ via SearchEngineLand]

The overriding goal seems to be not slugging it out in the intensely competitive cell phone hardware market, but rather creating a new platform for Google advertising. Free, ad-supported phone service isn’t out of the question. One thing that Google has discovered in the past is that “free” is a very attractive price point. They have taken costly web analytics software and offered it free to users, who can better manage their paid Google Adwords campaigns. In addition, Google vacuums up even more data for its insatiable effort to better understand Web users and site traffic patterns.

Wireless Market Disruption. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that Google could cause some major restructuring in the stodgy U.S. cell phone market. The big carriers that dominate wireless service in this country also dominate cell phone hardware distribution - greatly to the detriment of U.S. wireless users. Hardware choices are limited compared available those in Europe and Asia, and U.S. carriers sometimes even cripple hardware features to boost service revenue. Apple did nothing to break these oligopolistic practices when they introduced their iPhone - rather, they released it through a single carrier. It’s likely that Google will find it easier to cooperate with the U.S. wireless giants too, but they may shake up the market by offering new hardware at dramatically lower ad-supported hardware pricing.

Google Smart Phone. What would I love to see? A Google-designed smart phone. I’ve been patiently waiting for the Verizon XV6800 to release (OK, maybe not patiently), and even though I want this phone I’m sure I’ll find it has important limitations and compromises. With Google’s demonstrated creativity, I think they could probably shake up the smart phone market, too. Every employee would have one, and by the time Smart GPhone 2.0 came out, I’m sure it would rock.

Goo-Fone or Gphone - Fact or Fiction?

Goo-Fone? .. or should that be Gphone? It may not matter given what Google is said to have said. Google seems to be strongly denying the rumors that it will develop its own cell phone.

Rumors have been circulating for months based on particular actions by Google, for example on some intriguing new hires. There might well be attractive economics if Google were to follow this route since clearly the Mobile Web is growing much more strongly than the regular Web.

Now Google has chosen to come out with a denial. Supposedly it will seek alliances with the established telcos. Given that different telcos often adopt a walled garden approach to their own particular offerings, this implies a multi-solution approach by Google. Google will also be accepting a smaller share of the profit pie than if it were in the driving seat. In some ways the strategy implied by the denial seems less attractive than the strategy they have now denied pursuing.

It also is somewhat unusual for a company to come out with a denial of actions rather than announcing news of actions. Why was it felt necessary to issue a denial? All in all the denial seems less credible than what is being denied. I personally think we’re more likely to be seeing a Goo-Fone or Gphone or whatever they decide to call it at some time in the not too distant future.

Cerf Disconnects Google Phone Rumors

Last week, a high-ranking Google executive confirmed that the search engine company is developing a mobile phone. Now another exec - one with even more influence - has denied the rumors. “[B]ecoming an equipment manufacturer is pretty far from our business model,” said Vinton Cerf.

Cerf effectively outranks Isabel Aguilera, Google’s chief executive in Spain and Portugal; it was Aguilera who made a proclamation about the GPhone six days ago. But if Cerf’s word isn’t enough for you, Richard Kimber, Google’s managing director of sales and operations in Southeast Asia, confirmed the handset’s nonexistence.

“At this point in time, we are very focused on the software, not the phone,” said Kimber, as quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald. And while his statement, in combination with Cerf’s, effectively stomps out any hopes on the hardware front, it does leave other doors open.

Indeed, Cerf described his employer as “quite eager to be part of the mobile revolution,” and said that Google is “very interested in the platforms that other people are building.” The company’s recent deals with Vodafone and Orange serve as evidence of this focus (although those deals were also considered evidence of the GPhone’s existence).

At any rate, it appears that Google has issued a new party line in regards to one of its best-known mythical products. The blogosphere is reacting to the news with some disappointment - and some suspicion - and yet Cerf is one of the most credible people within the company (and, given his background in the communications industry, Cerf is perhaps the most credible person on this subject).

So Cerf’s proclamation should stand: there will be no Google phone. At least not yet.

Apple's iPhone Then Google's GPhone

The discussions could lead to Google's search technology powering a new "Google phone", which would make using cell phones as easy as the world's most popular search engine.

Their plans centre on a branded Google phoneit might have a screen similar to a video iPod. But it would have built-in Google software which would dramatically improve on the slow and cumbersome experience of surfing the web from a mobile handset.

If you think you don't need a Gphone, you may want to consider the features a Google-powered phone will bring

Among the potential benefits are location-based searches: aware of your handset's geographical position, Google could offer a tailored list of local cinemas, restaurants and other amenities, and maps and images from Google Earth.

If the rumors are true, Google's certainly smart to continue with it's path of not getting involved with hardware production. Let Orange handle the phone's production and Google handle the browsing experience. The Gphone could go on sale as early as 2008.

Google Phone An Attempt To Take On $100 PC?

Google Phone has been a subject of many rumors lately. Mark Hopkins, a technology podcaster, says he got the confirmation of the Gphone after talking to an insider Google (GOOG).

He said that the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone, and the thought process behind it’s functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this…regarding the two week timetable on it’s release, he said he could not confirm that part of the story.

If that indeed is the case, then it makes sense for Google to be talking to mobile carriers in countries where PC density is marginal. By tightly integrating the Google Apps, Google Phone could become a viable rival to the much ballyhooed $100 PC being promoted by everyone from Nicholas Negroponte and Microsoft (MSFT), and will also over come the connectivity problem facing most of the $100 PC schemes. Of course, I have no way of confirming what Hopkins is claiming, so take this post with a big pinch of salt.

Google Phone Spotted, Bigfoot Was Using It

The so-called Gphone is joining the ranks of myth the ever-looming Google operating system inhabits, alongside Bigfoot, Atlantis, and nude Jessica Alba. Nevertheless, as an Indian news source reports, the illusive Gphone is merely "fortnight" away from launch worldwide.

Or within a year. And Google's prepared to invest up to $8 billion in the project. Or hundreds of millions.

Math's kinda hard.

It's hard telling which publication printed it first, as it has appeared in several places, but I stumbled across it at Rediff.com, where Rajesh Kurup and Leslie D. Monte in Mumbai reported these (somewhat conflicting) details:

• Talks are believed to be taking place with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar…
• Sources…said a simultaneous launch across the US and Europe…
• US regulatory approval, which is expected soon, is the only hurdle that Google is waiting to cross…
• Google plans to invest $7-8 billion for its global telephony foray…
• These reports suggest that Google has developed a prototype that will hit the markets in a year's time…
• …Google had invested "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the project and was involved in discussions with US-based T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless…

And the Google geekosphere went into a near self-gratifying meltdown before taking a second look at the details and losing their, um, enthusiasm.

Google has a track record for avoiding the hardware side of things, despite the fact they did offer the FCC a promised $4.6 billion for wireless spectrum, hinting the company wants to delve into the wireless side of the business (or at least in wholesaling).

However, it remains to be seen if Google's willing to take on the kind of debt that is being reported. Last check, the company had something like $12.5 billion in cash, exceeded by the $12.6 billion speculated, unless $8 billion includes the spectrum bid, which is for the US only and not a global regulatory hurdle.

The first clue, actually, is in the first line, where Google is classified as a "nearly $13.5 billion search engine major." So maybe part of the problem is the language barrier (and a nice rebuttal to the idea of outsourcing English writers). But the company is actually worth about $160 billion.

And if the company is still awaiting regulatory approval, they must be getting it this week if there's a launch in a fortnight, unless the launch is within a year, like stated later in the article.

But also, it seems unlikely because of Google's buddy-buddy relationship with Apple. Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the board of directors at Apple, and you'd think Google launching a competitor this close to iPhone's maiden voyage would likely peeve his business partners.

Google, as usual, refused to comment on rumors and speculation.

I think there is a possibility that Google will enter the wireless market, in some capacity – most likely from the provider and software side – but the Gphone doesn't match with Google's track record, prototypes spotted in Europe notwithstanding. But a worldwide launch in two weeks?

Somehow I doubt it.

Google Phone Rumours

Recent comments by Google Iberia's CEO, Isabel Aguilera, indicate that the search engine giant is working on its own mobile phone. Spanish online journal noticias.com published a brief article (in Spanish | English) indicating that Google engineers have been working (at least to some extent) on a mobile device.

There is nothing certain about the specification of any upcoming Google phone - and indeed there may never be one, but it's an intriguing idea for many reasons.

At first glance you might think that this type of idea is about branding. Like Apple, Google is a highly prestigious name and you might think that Google would be happy knocking together an iPhone competitor, but we think that Google will take a significantly different approach.

More than just a search engine

Google is no stranger to mobile services. Google Mobile is a neat front end to web browsing, searching and Google Mail.. but it's a very limited approach. Instead Google may well take the opportunity to come up with a tightly integrated client/server arrangement with any Google Phone which could knock the competition into a cocked hat.

Although the vast majority of Google visitors use the search engine only, Google is a major destination in its own right with Gmail / Google Mail, Google Maps / Maps for Mobile, Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Video / YouTube, Blogger, Google Talk and dozens of other applications and tools. Many of these applications would be ideal for use on a mobile device, and indeed there are mobile versions of most Google tools available.

Google can go one step further with its own phone though. Instead of accessing Google services through a web browser, Google could create a more sophisticated arrangement where a software application on the handset itself interacts with the Google server, allowing seamless client/server integration with email, calendering and other tools that you'd normally only expect to see on an enterprise level device such as a corporate BlackBerry solution. But because of the way Google works, this level of sophistication could be available to everyone, not just businesses. Push email via Gmail is another possibility with this arrangement.

Enterprise level integration for the consumer?

Even more complex applications could work seamlessly. Users could create a Google spreadsheet on their business PC, work on it later on a mobile phone and then access it again at home.. all without having to worry about transferring files.

Powerful location-based solutions could be created by adding a GPS module to the Google Phone and use it alongside Google Maps.

What's more, Google could make this work very easily "out of the box". Once a user has given their authentication details to the Google Phone then there's very little more that needs to be done. All the phone data would be synchronised with the Google server, so it could be easily accessible from a desktop machine or even by another authorised person.

Giving enterprise style sophistication with Mac style ease of use to the average customer is something that other providers would struggle to compete with, and crucially it would give a competitive advantage to Google over the likes of arch-rivals Microsoft.

What might the Google Phone look like?

So far, we've talked about how Google might make their application suite work with a phone, rather than speculating about the device itself. Our best bet is that any Google Phone would run a version of Linux because that offers the level of sophistication needed to run a complex application, and Google is already quite used to dealing with that operating system.

Given that the handset is likely to be a Linux smartphone, then Google would want to choose a partner experienced in that field. Motorola is probably the leading Linux proponent with handsets such as the Motorola ROKR E6 and several other devices. Alternatively, Samsung sell Linux-based smartphones in China and other manufacturers such as Panasonic and NEC also compete in this area. There are also several small startups that Google could work with - or even buy outright.

A device such as the Nokia N800 or Nokia 770 (pictured) might seem ideal as it has a wide screen and runs the Maemo Linux platform, but crucially this platform does not support standard voice calls yet. Although Maemo isn't a major business area for Nokia, there could be a considerable advantage for both Google and Nokia to develop a device of this type. But this is just speculation (of course!).

With the right development, Google services could be made to work seamlessly on a variety of handsets including large format PDA-style smartphones and much more compact traditional style business phones.

Of course, perhaps there will be nothing at all.. but the possibility of a Google Phone is so compelling that it would be a shame if it never happened.

Google To Tap Ubuntu Mobile or Embedded for Google Phone?

The media has been abuzz over the past 24 hours as the Wall Street Journal has reported that Google has begun presenting their phone strategy to carriers. While much of this information is not new, the fact that mass media is covering it, has caused new focus on the initiative.

Google's plans appear to focus around making a new platform, marketed to manufacturers and carriers at the same time, to be branded by the carriers themselves. This is similar to Danger's strategy with the T-Mobile Sidekick. Using a central platform, the hardware is farmed out to other manufacturers, and the carrier promotes the device as their own.

It appears that Google is poised to do this using Mobile Linux, specifically the Ubuntu Mobile platform. This software would finally run full-circle with Google's strategy. The company is fueled on advertising and ideas, but Linux has yet to turn a dime for the company, beyond token gestures in internal software and their search appliances. Neither have dented Google's profit margin significantly. Despite that, the company has touted their developer's contributions to the Linux platform, as well as some tacit support for Ubuntu.

Both the Ubuntu Embedded and Mobile platforms are designed and marketed by Canonical, which itself is trying to generate revenue from its own success in Linux. Canonical has won massive followings in the desktop Linux arena, by promoting a Mac-like version of Linux that cuts the fat, while maintaining extreme ease-of-use. Unlike other Linux distributions, Ubuntu still fits on a single CD-ROM. Canonical has entered the mobile computing arena with the intent to profit through embedded versions of Linux that keep their ideals at its core. Google appears to be ready to back this initiative as well.

With Ubuntu on its side, Google appears to be beginning to develop both a mobile, and a potential future desktop strategy. Like Apple's iPhone, maintaining a shared code base can come in handy should the company plan to launch a desktop operating system in the future. Utilizing shared code in the interface and core application code, much like Apple, Google can maintain platform independence offering consumers devices on a whole host of platforms. Now, Google appears to finally be ready to leverage its technical assets on technology that it can actually profit from, namely, royalties on inexpensive cell phones. Cell phones that can still be marketed for free-after-rebate, and Google's services (not to mention their keep-it-free-to-the-consumer... ethics). Also, Ubuntu Mobile or Embedded, according to sources, is one of the few candidates of platforms that can handle AJAX at full speeds. AJAX drives much of Google's web presence, from Google Maps to Gmail.

Ubuntu Mobile is targeted at advanced devices, and is targeting a mid-2008 release. Nearly every report and source points to a similar timeframe for Google's first phone.

Sony Ericsson W950i

In the middle of last year I reviewed the M600i, Sony Ericsson’s attempt to bring the UIQ platform out of its chunky, smartphoney ‘P’ series shell and turn it into something for a wider audience.

Now I have the tri-band, 3G W950i in my hands. Like the M600i this is a small format slimline phone. It is 106mm tall, 54mm wide, 15mm thick and 112g and tucks away fairly nicely in the pocket. Its deep purple finish, which Sony Ericsson names Mystic Purple, looks brown in some conditions. It’s distinctive, though I’m not sure I like it.

Again it is an attempt to expand the audience for UIQ, this time aiming at music lovers, and its standout feature aside from Walkman branding and music playback ability is that it sports no less than 4GB of flash memory.

This is a lot of memory for a phone and as much as you get on the mid-range iPod nano. Unusually for a phone though there is no way of expanding the internal memory with flash memory cards. If you are OK using Sony Ericsson’s bundled Disc2Phone software or basic file transfer to get tracks to the handset, then good for you. But in my world neither is as convenient as using memory cards to get tunes onto a phone.

Battery life matters a lot for a phone that doubles up as a music player. The M600i did pretty well here delivering more than ten hours of music from its own speaker with its screen forced to stay on.

Sadly the W950i fared less well giving me a minute under seven hours of music, again with its screen forced on. That is disappointing when compared to what you get from standalone players.

Sound volume and quality through the loudspeaker were both reasonably good and loud too. You can view album art and assign a ‘mood’ to tunes. The choices are happy, sad, energetic, chilled and no mood. I rather like this idea. There is an FM radio which can automatically tune its twenty presets or you can tune them manually.

The headset comes in two sections. The part that connects to the phone contains the FM radio antenna, microphone used for voice calling and a lozenge offering controls for playback and system volume. Beyond these is a 3.5mm slot into which you can plug the provided earbuds or your own headphones.

Unfortunately, the lower section uses the same slot on the phone as the mains power jack. So you can’t listen to music while charging the battery.

I said right at the start of this review that the W950i is 3G so you might expect video calling to be part of the deal. Wrong. There is no front facing camera, and, incidentally none on the back either. No video calls, no stills shooting. At least 3G users will find the web browser capable. I like especially that you can flick into widescreen format to better view web sites.

Overall, the screen is very good. It measure 2.6 inches corner to corner, delivers 240 x 320 pixels and 262,000 colours. It is bright, crisp and vibrant. It is touch sensitive as UIQ demands.

UIQ itself is a solid and capable smartphone platform. Diary and to-do list management with PC synchronisation, notes taking, mobile email, sound recorder, the already noted Web browser and RSS reader are all here. They sit alongside features like a stopwatch, calculator, unit converter and timer. Additionally, there’s more entertainment focussed stuff like TrackID. This records snippets of songs from the radio or other source and checks them against the Gracenote database telling you what you are listening to in a text message.

There is certainly plenty to entice, but the ergonomics of everyday use are not the best. The W950i has a flat number pad. Small pimples in the centre of each ‘key’ area make this easier to use than some, but it is not as pleasing or as fast to use as real keys. Texting was certainly a slower business than usual. On screen handwriting recognition and a tappable keyboard help a little but you need to use the W950i two-handed to take advantage of these and work with the provided stylus. Neither is as fast to use as a good number pad.

When you are using the music player three orange coloured control ‘buttons’ light up between the number pad and screen. One will play and pause tracks, one lets you skip forwards between tracks or within them if you hold it down, the third does the same job for going backwards. These disappear when you quit the music player. There is also a dedicated Walkman ‘button’ which is always visible and which launches the Walkman software, and another play/pause button – a proper one this time – on the right edge of the casing alongside a volume rocker.

A wheel on the left edge of the casing provides vertical scrolling and a press to select feature. Movement through lists on screen (for example lists of options or applications) registered a bit later than I expected, and there is an irritating freewheeling aspect so that when scrolling the wheel quickly it went rattling on for a list item or two after I’d stopped moving it. Scrolling slowly was the only way round this and it took a little self-discipline to get what should be the simple task of making a choice from a menu right every time.

Beneath the scroll wheel is a superb back button. Short presses cycle back through screens, a long press takes you straight back to the home screen.

On screen tappable icons are often simply too tiny to hit accurately with a finger. Just one example are the three buttons for quick access to the repeat, shuffle, and equaliser features on the main screen of the music player. You need fingernail precision or the provided stylus to hit any of these accurately. The real annoyance is that there is room within the screen design to have made all three much larger.
Some icons are lodged so far into the corners of the screen that I almost wonder if Sony Ericsson is having some kind of a joke at my expense, or, a less paranoid thought, if they had done much usability testing.

I’ve not yet come across a phone that can replace my Sansa e280 (Gordon reviewed the very similar but lower specced e260) and had wondered if the W950i might be it. It isn’t.

Nor, I think, is it likely to wow existing fans of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones. This leaves smartphone fans wanting good music playback as a possible target. Smartphone fans can be demanding customers, and the difficult user interface, poor battery life for music playback and fiddly number pad may do the W950i no favours in meeting their needs.

This is all a bit of a shame. I am in no doubt that UIQ is a strong operating system. If you are prepared to put the effort in and learn how all the little twiddles work, then the W950i is a capable, competent and ultimately useful phone. However, there are a lot of irritations and I just don’t think many people will be prepared to put in the effort.

Verdict

The W950i’s 4GB hard drive is a lure but it is overly complicated by a poor user interface, which won’t satisfy either music or smartphone fans.

Sony Ericsson W880i

One of the current trends in mobile phones is to go thin, thin, thin. In other areas it is possible to be too thin - modelling, acting and any thing else involving Size Zero. Can the same be said of mobiles?

Sony Ericsson’s W880i made me ask this question because while it is just 9.4mm thick and looks absolutely stunning, its size has made for a significant set of compromises in terms of its buttons. Without exception these are small, and while they will cause no problems for some, others will find them simply too fiddly to get on with.

Sony Ericsson has obviously put some thought into its ‘buttons dilemma’. The navigation key has raised ridges top and bottom, which make it relatively easy to work with. The shortcut buttons to its sides are raised well from their surroundings and are well spaced. The side buttons are tiny and not raised from their surroundings, yet somehow the pad of a finger works with them.

However, the number keys are the Devil incarnate. If you do a lot of texting, be warned that they are tiny – 1mm tall, 6mm wide – and are not conducive to fast SMS creation.

The thinness of this phone contributes to the fact that it is quite probably the lightest mobile I’ve ever seen at 71g. In the pocket or on the table it has the same ‘footprint’ as many other candybar mobiles and is 103mm tall and 47mm wide.

My review sample came from T-Mobile but you can find this phone on Orange, Vodafone and O2 in its orange and black livery rather than the silver and black alternative. In this configuration the front of the handset is black and has markings that make it look as though it is made of dark slate. There are orange highlights on the navigation button, the number buttons are shiny orange and the back is a most lovely bright vibrant shade of orange.

This is a Walkman phone and as you’d expect there is a dedicated button to launch the Walkman player located on the top left edge of the phone. Once in the player, control is straightforward and achieved via the navigation button and soft-menus where you can view album art and manage playlists. There is an equaliser with five settings including Mega Bass and Voice and Normal and any changes are automatically saved.

Sony Ericsson provides a reasonable set of earphones, with in-ear buds that I found comfortable to wear. The headset comes in two parts with a 3.5mm jack just past the microphone so you can use your own headphones if you prefer them and don’t mind dealing with plenty of trailing cable.

At the handset end the headset shares its proprietary socket with the mains power adaptor. The power adaptor has a through port so that you can attach the headphones at the same time as charging the phone. It is an unwieldy solution, but at least it means you can charge the phone and listen to music at the same time. Alternatively you can switch to a set of A2DP supporting Bluetooth headphones – as this handset will send stereo sound to them.

You can, though switch to a set of A2DP supporting Bluetooth headphones – as this handset will send stereo sound to them. The chunky headset plug looks absolutely massive when plugged into this slim and sleek phone, and it ruins the overall appeal.

There is just 16MB of memory built in, which is paltry for any phone that has pretensions as a music player. But Sony Ericsson has included a 1GB Memory Stick Micro card. The slot is on the lower left edge of the phone but you can’t get to it when the headphones or mains power adaptor are plugged in. There is no FM radio this time around.

The W880i is a Tri-band GSM and 3G handset with a front facing camera for video calling. The back facing camera shoots stills at resolutions up to 2-megapixels, lacks flash, auto-focus and a self portrait mirror and I found it rather disappointing.

My standard reference photo of the coloured dish shot under ordinary household lighting, lacks brightness and definition and looks washed out. Outdoor shots also failed to give very good colour reproduction, and the camera didn’t seem able to capture much detail despite photos being taken at the Fine rather than Normal quality setting.

Photos look OK on the phone, though, and you can switch to showing them in landscape mode with a simple press of a soft-menu key, to take full advantage of the available screen size.

This is handy as while the screen displays 240 x 320 pixels, manages 262,000 colours and is vibrant and sharp, it is rather small at just 1.8 diagonal inches.

I took advantage of T-Mobile’s Web’n’walk service to test the Web browser. You can view pages full screen, send the screen to landscape format, and opt for text only as well as zooming. Bookmarks are automatically created and there is an RSS feed reader.
Zooming is particularly clever. Once you’ve chosen the zoom option from the right soft-menu you use the navigation button to zoom in an out of a page at 10 per cent increments. This is much more user friendly than choosing a text size from menus – it requires minimal buttons presses to get things just how you like them.

The rest of the software includes mobile email, sound recorder, alarm clock, calendar, calculator, contact manager, notes taker, stopwatch, task manager and timer. You get a USB data cable, PC synchronising software and Sony Ericsson’s Disc2Phone software for music transfer.

Battery life was rather disappointing for a phone that has pretensions to replace your mobile music player. It gave me five and a quarter hours of continuous music from a full charge, which is pretty poor. Equally bad, the low battery warning came just ten minutes before the battery died which doesn’t give you much time to find mains power.

Verdict

I wanted to like the W880i because it looks so stunning. But in the end I think it’s too thin for its own good.

Sony Ericsson W850i

If you must have a phone with music playing abilities then Sony Ericsson’s range of Walkman handsets is likely to be at the top of your short list. It offers a wide range of such phones so it come as no surprise to see a slider enter the fray in the shape of the 3G, Tri-band W850i.

I’m quite a fan of the slider format. Good examples are small in the hand and are well featured The W850i meets the feature target well but it’s not all that petite.

It is 98mm tall, 47mm wide and 21mm thick and grows to around 130mm tall when slid open. These dimensions and its 116g weight make the other music slider phone I’ve looked at recently, the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic seem comparatively small.

Still, Sony Ericsson certainly knows how to do a music focussed handset, and the W850i shows this off in several ways. It is rather nicely designed and in particular the front panel offers all the music controls you need. There are two enormous soft-menu buttons which, when the music player is active, enable you to easily stop and restart music and to get to the player menus.

Below these, where you might normally expect to see a navigation pad is an area with a single pause/play button in a thumb-convenient recess. This is surrounded by four dots which light up orange when the player is active, white in other circumstances. By pressing on or near these dots you can navigate the entire play queue or music library as well as go forward and backwards within the playing track. The four dots are not buttons, nor is the area around them touch sensitive. You effectively press the casing inwards to activate a button beneath it. The orange dots offer something to aim for with the thumb pad or nail and the system works very well.

When you are not in the music player these four ‘buttons’ can be assigned to shortcuts, while the central button calls up the phone’s main menu.

There is a separate button dedicated to launching the music player. This is a long lozenge immediately beneath the screen. I found the way it pulsates with orange light as music plays very irritating and turning that feature off was one of my first tweaks of this handset.

Four more physical and quite small buttons sit on the outer edge of the front panel and these are Back, Internet, Cancel and Activity menu keys.

You can’t have the headphones plugged in and charge the phone at the same time though as the two connectors share the same socket on the bottom of the handset.

The Memory Stick Duo slot is on the top edge of the casing, making it easy to get to for card swapping. Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson only sees fit to bundle a 32MB card with the phone. With just 16MB built-in you are going to need to invest in more memory to have any chance of using this phone as a portable music player.

There is software for both entertainment and keeping organised built into this phone. There’s Photo blogging, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and MusicDJ for editing media and the quite hilarious FaceWarp, which applys ‘humorous’ twists to photos – great for when your sitting with your mates in the pub.

Other software includes a calendar, task manager, alarm clock, calculator, note taker, stopwatch, timer and sound recorder. The Web browser is supplemented by an RSS feed reader. Email, MMS and SMS are of course all catered for, and Bluetooth and infra-red are both built in. The phone will send stereo to a suitable Bluetooth headset.

You get a USB cable for PC connection and the PC Suite software for sharing data with a PC including synchronising diary and contacts. Alternatively you can use the phone in USB Mass Storage mode if all you want to do is copy files between it and a PC.

The camera flash can be set to stay on indefinitely or for one minute to act as a torch, or used in an SOS configuration (three long and three short flashes continuously)

Sony Ericsson W710i

Not that long ago I reviewed Nokia’s review5500 Sport and at the end of the process decided the handset wasn’t really suitable for anyone serious about getting fit.

I have to say from the start that I think the same about Sony Ericsson’s W710i. If you want some tech to help you get fit you are going to be far better off with something that can track your movement through a GPS antenna and measure your heart rate than you are with something that uses a pedometer to measure distance travelled and thinks a calorie counter is a useful fitness aid.

That said, let’s look a little deeper.

The quad-band GSM W750i is a clamshell handset and as a rule I tend to find this style the least attractive, but I am warming to it and the W710i is helping me along in this respect.

It is very neat and tidy when closed – measuring just 88mm tall, 48mm wide and 24.5mm deep. As a result it is easy to pocket. When opened it grows to 160mm tall and there is a lot of unused space between keypad and screen which I am not so happy about. It weighs 101g, and I bet some Sony Ericsson executives are kicking themselves about two of those grammes.

The internal screen is a 176 x 220 pixel 262,000 colour offering that is clear, sharp and bright but would have benefited from more pixels. While the numberpad is large, the navigation button is not, but it is easy enough to use and the remaining buttons are well located and easy to find. There are dedicated buttons for the music player, Internet access, tabbed shortcuts and alerts area and power on/off.

Side buttons enable you to lock the keys, use the built-in camera and control volume. Bluetooth is built-in and so, happily, is infra-red. There is a mere 10MB of internal memory but the phone comes with a 512MB Memory Stick Micro card, whose slot is on the left edge of the casing under the battery cover.

If the grey, orange and white colour scheme has not been designed to emulate that of umpteen pairs of trainers, then the match is a fortunate coincidence.

All the dedicated fitness software is together under one menu option whose icon is a stopwatch. There are four elements to this – Running, Walking, Results and Settings. If you want to do anything other than running or walking, forget this handset now.
Under Settings you tell the handset your height, weight, year of birth and gender. It does a little maths and calculates calories burned during exercise. It is not rocket science, and is only going to be an approximation.

Distance travelled is also approximate, as it relies on the pedometer. You can calibrate this by wearing the phone and walking (or running) a known distance and then telling the phone how far you’ve gone. It only saves one set of information so if your stride length is different when running and walking you’ll have to choose which to opt for, and it makes no allowances for anyone who runs, as I do almost all the time, off road and so has a variable stride pattern depending on whether they are on bumpy ground, going up or down hill etc.

The key point about all this is that the handset is not going to deliver an accurate measure of distance travelled. In Sony Ericsson’s defence the manual makes it clear that the Fitness applications deliver approximate information, so you shouldn’t expect perfection.

You can make various settings for information display – miles versus kilometres, distance units per hour or minutes per distance unit, and kilocalories or kilojoules burned. You can set max and min speeds for running and get alerts if you go outside these.

For the Walking and Running software to work you have to wear the phone and the software only records data when the phone is closed. For Walking, the step counter resets itself automatically at midnight and saves each day’s results for viewing later.

Sony Ericsson provides a belt clip and you can use this together with an adjustable armband to wear the phone on your upper arm. I prefer the latter as belt-clips never fit securely to lycra running shorts. The phone fits into its clip very solidly and it would take a great deal for it to be jolted out and fall to the ground.

There is a large front display – a 128 x 128 pixel greyscale STN screen. Of course the W710i plays music, and this screen provides plenty of detail about what is playing at any given time.

To its left and right are controls for your tunes. You can pause and resume playback and skip within and between tracks using them. These large, rubbery and tactile buttons are easy to find when the W710i is in your pocket. They are also easy to find when you are exercising, and in this context can be used to start a new lap, pause and resume measuring. When you are exercising, the front screen provides some feedback on progress – distance travelled, speed and so on.

The W710i has a lot of other software of note. A calendar and contact manager can exchange data with a PC – you get the software and a cable for this job. There is an RSS reader as well as a web browser, thought the low resolution screen lets browsing down somewhat. There is an email client and sound recorder, calculator, stopwatch and separate timer useful for standard, non fitness related tasks such as boiling an egg.
An FM radio is included and the headset is in two parts so that you can use the handset connecting section as the antenna and plug your own 3.5mm headphones into this if you prefer them to Sony Ericsson’s in-ear buds with their over-ear fittings.

There are lots of other software extras I don’t have room to cover. Instead I’ll close with a look at the camera and battery life.

The camera’s performance is variable. As always, I left it to automatically work out how to cope with the lighting conditions for every shot. My standard reference shot, taken indoors under ordinary home lighting is somewhat grainy and rather disappointing, as are the two outdoor shots. The outdoor shots were taken on an overcast winter day with low light levels. In one, you can see that some of the catkins are out of focus – it was a little breezy and the camera did not cope well with the movement this created. On the other hand, the cheeses were shot in a well lit shop and are well reproduced. You can blog photos direct from the handset.

Battery life is a bit of a let down. I got continuous music for just under five hours from a full battery charge, and this was with the screen going off after just a few seconds. I was disappointed with this result, and rate the W750i average to poor on battery life.

Verdict

If I had to choose between this and the Nokia 5500 Sport for fitness use I would choose this handset because it lets you calibrate the pedometer.
In actuality, I would rather choose neither. The camera is a little wobbly, as is battery life. On the upside, Sony Ericsson provides PC Connectivity, plus there is an FM radio and a good music player. Additionally, the front screen is large enough to be useful, the side buttons for music control work very well and I even rather like the clamshell design.

Sony Ericsson W610i

The last handset I looked at from Sony Ericsson was the W880i. Hailed as an ultra small, ultra thin mobile, my main problem with it was that the number dialling buttons were simply too small to use comfortably. This problem marred what was otherwise for me a rather nice little phone.

So, into my hands comes the Sony Ericsson W610i. As I write it is available on O2, Orange and Vodafone and with each operator you can get it at prices from free upwards. It is a quad-band handset with GPRS and EDGE and comes in two colour schemes. My review sample had a black frontage with silver and orange highlights and a superbly brash bright orange back. A version with a white front and black back is also available.

At 93g the W610i weighs about 20g more than the W880i. It is also a heck of a lot thicker – 14mm compared to 9.4mm. It is just a single millimetre shorter and narrower at 102mm tall and 46mm wide. The single millimetre variations are so little as to be insignificant if you are comparing the two handsets.

What matters more in a straight comparison is the size of the number keys. Sony Ericsson has gone for similar keys to the W880i but I found the W610i’s number keys a little easier to use thanks to a small amount of extra width. However, if you do a lot of texting, you really should try them out for use at speed before plumping for this mobile.

If you decide you can live with the small number keys, then the rest of the buttons probably won’t give you any trouble. The navigation button is a thin silver circle raised a fair way from the fascia. To its left and right are two incomplete circles similarly designed. Their upper edges can be pressed for the softmenu functions, their lower edges for Back and Clear.

There are buttons in the centre of each of the circles on the left and right. The one on the left is the Walkman key, the central one is a pause/play button, which doubles as a select button when you are not listening to music. The one on the right calls up the Activity Menu. There is another pause/play button on the left edge of the handset and a volume rocker on the right edge.

I rather like the Activity Menu. It appears on a lot of Sony Ericsson mobiles. Call it up and you get a series of tabbed screens. Between them these allow you toM see ‘events’ such as missed calls or messages, view a list of applications currently running and switch to them, manage a series of shortcuts to applications and settings and access your Web bookmarks. Master the use of this and it can become a very handy tool.

As a Walkman phone, the usual Sony Ericsson headset connector is on the left edge of the phone. It is shared by the mains power adaptor and the provided USB PC cable. The adaptor is as chunky as ever.

The main power adaptor lacks the through-port of the W880i, so you can’t charge the phone and listen through headphones at the same time. On the other hand, the headset is two-piece, with a 3.5mm jack just past the microphone, so you could use your own earphones instead of Sony Ericsson’s in-ear buds. You can also use your own earphones with the built in FM radio as the antenna for that is in the section of the headset that connects to the handset.

The Walkman software is just as good as it is on other current range Sony Ericsson Walkman mobiles in terms of ease of use, and sound quality is perfectly acceptable too. I found there to be plenty of volume. I’m not convinced that the stereo widening effect does a great deal, but the equaliser has a noticeable impact.

There is 73MB of memory on the phone itself and a 512MB Memory Stick Micro card ships with it. Its slot is on the left edge of the handset. You can’t get to the slot when anything is plugged into that headset /mains/PC cable socket as the connector obscures its cover, which is just poor design. Sony Ericsson’s Disk2Phone software is provided. This can reduce the bit rate of tunes on the fly allowing you to cram more onto phone memory or memory card.

Sony Ericsson absolutely stuffs its mobiles with software and features. The PC Suite software that is provided on CD can be used to synchronise the phone’s calendar with Outlook on your PC. Meanwhile on the handset itself there are features including mobile email, five alarms, calculator, notes taker, stopwatch, tasks manager and timer. There is a utility that lets you blog direct from the handset. The rather clever TrackID system which can identify songs from a short snippet of a recording is also here. An RSS reader complements the Web browser.

The Sony Ericsson W610i doesn’t deliver the greatest of Web browsing experiences. Its browser has a ‘Smart-Fit feature which wraps web pages to the screen width to avoid the need for horizontal scanning, and it coped with the TrustedReviews Web site. But the screen delivers just 176 x 220 pixels, and is small at 2-inches corner to corner. If you think you’ll be using the web a fair bit, there are better options than this handset.

Of course, there is a camera. It captures stills at resolutions up to 2.0 megapixels which is a little low-key for Sony Ericsson. Its twin LED flash can be used as a very effective torch. There is a macro mode and also an infinity setting for the focus. The autofocusing system takes a short time to kick in when you press the shutter button on the right edge of the casing, but the pictures themselves are reasonably sharp.

The coloured dish, which is my standard shot, photographed indoors under ordinary household lights doesn’t have quite the colour clarity that I’d have liked, but it is certainly good enough. The white flowers have reproduced rather well, though the effect of compression is more noticeable in the pink flowers. Colour reproduction here is realistic, though.

You have the right to expect very good battery life from any handset in the Walkman range. The Sony Ericsson W610i played music continuously for ten hours 22 minutes, which is pretty good. The screen goes off automatically after about 20 seconds to conserve power.

Verdict

The Sony Ericsson W610i is a pretty average Walkman phone. The presence of an FM radio is a treat, but the screen and camera are both a little below par, and the small buttons might be too fiddly for some.

People are willing to buy a Google or Yahoo mobile phone

Even though neither Google nor Yahoo have confirmed that they are planning to enter the handset market, research firms like Equs are making reports, polling people whether or not they will be interested to buy a phone made by one of two search giants.

The results of the poll are staggering, with 55% of U.S. consumers saying that they would be willing to buy a phone produced by Google or Yahoo. People have a high level of trust in two main search engines, and are hoping that such device would bring greatly enhanced user interface. Furthermore, Egus findings indicate that 69% of consumers currently use mobile search, and Equs CEO Al Nazareli said: “Google and Yahoo! are uniquely well-positioned to enter the mobile device market and may have an advantage over other consumer brands looking to enter the space.” (via: InformationWeek)

About Sony Ericsson K800i

The efforts of phone manufacturers to cram more and more pixels into the lenses of the built-in cameras is nothing short of relentless. Samsung has hit 10-megapixels with its SCH-B600 phone, but that is of course no more than a technology statement and is only available in Korea anyway. Here in the UK, the best we can get right now is 3.2 million courtesy of Sony Ericsson’s K800i, the first SE phone to carry the Cyber-shot branding.

It is not just about pixels, though, and Sony Ericsson has added in some non pixel-count features which augment the K800i’s potential as a cameraphone.

None of what follows is intended to suggest that you can use the K800i as a replacement for a dedicated digital camera for serious photography, but I do think that this handset does wonders for the idea of a mobile phone as a ‘snap and share’ and ‘snap and keep’ and even ‘snap and print’ device.

In hardware terms the K800i isn’t much to look at. Small (105 x 47 x 22 mm), light (115g) and unprepossessing in terms of design with shades of slate grey and silver and white highlights, it doesn’t give the appearance of being a top end handset.

The front facing controls are dominated by a small joystick which is one of the better ones I’ve used. It is responsive and has plenty of travel. You can programme its four directions for specific functions.

There are two absolutely tiny buttons to the far left and right of the joystick that need to be approached with a fingernail if you are to hit them accurately.

One launches the web browser, the other is the Activity Menu key which contains four tabbed sections: these are more shortcuts to applications, web bookmarks, notifications about missed calls and new messages, and, helpfully the chance to close any running applications that might be slowing the handset down.

The front facing camera for video calling is absolutely tiny and located in the speaker grille where it is not obviously visible. But when making test 3G calls the camera delivered fine quality images to the K800i and the receiving handset.

You get the software for the primary, rear mounted camera started by sliding a substantial cover off its lens or pressing a dedicated button on the bottom right edge of the casing that is then also used to take snaps.

When I rested the K800i in landscape mode to frame shots my left thumb invariably rested on a key on the opposite edge that provides a pause and stop function for music playback. Sony Ericsson has recessed that key so there is no danger of accidentally hitting it while using the camera, a neat design touch. However, there is a danger of the shutter opening in your pocket, activating the camera and running the battery down, so watch out for that.

Camera extras include an auto focus that lets you get quite close to a subject and still produce a crisp shot, and BestPic, which shoots no less than nine images when you depress the shutter button. You flick through them to chose what you want to keep. Shutter lag is minimal and even when doing some pretty speedy panning I got no blurring in my test shots.

Then there is the picture blogging. You take a picture, then from the camera’s More menu you choose ‘Blog this’. The picture is resized, and you give it a name and a description then send it to your photo blog.

The first time you do this the blog is automatically created and you are sent a text with login details. Share this with others and they can access your creations. Now I have to say my review handset had some trouble creating the blog, but it had been with other reviewers before I got it and maybe it didn’t like the idea of starting over.

The 16x digital zoom is best steered clear of, but the xenon flash seemed to deliver better quality indoor images than I am used to seeing from a phone and if you have a PictBridge capable printer you can print direct from the handset. Panorama shooting and frames are among the various extras available to liven up your images.
The hardware controls are very well thought through. Both softkey buttons and the joystick help you access features and settings quickly, and two further small buttons above the screen give access to more. One of these calls up thumbnail images regardless of what else you are doing with the handset at the time. If you have ever fumbled on a handset for a particular shot to show to a friend you will know how valuable this is.

There is only 64MB of built in memory, which doesn’t seem a great deal for a handset designed with snapping in mind, and certainly won’t cater for much music. Expansion is achieved via Sony Memory Stick Micro cards. These are as tiny as microSD and as fiddly to use. The slot is on the left edge of the casing and it is protected by a cover.

The K800i has a generally strong range of non-camera related features on offer. There is calendar and contact software that will share information with your PC using the provided PC Suite software and cable. There is music playback (of course – this is a Sony Ericsson handset), and its quality is good enough for listening to while travelling.

The range of additional software is so strong that there isn’t room to do much more than just list the highlights. As well as being able to make your own ringtones you can play three games, one of which, a Tennis game, shows off the handset’s 3D rendering nicely. Web browsing on the 240 x 320 pixel, 262,000 colour, 2in display is made easier by the fact that you can flip between portrait and landscape screen modes.

An RSS reader works independently of the browser and is an absolute treat for getting information really quickly. An FM radio augments the music playback. There are image and video editors, and the usual other stuff like alarms, notes management, sound recorder, and stopwatch.

During testing I ran an MP3 looping test and got eleven and a quarter hours of music. On standby the handset lasted at least week between charges. I’d probably want to charge it every other day in the real world, but it should happily survive a long weekend away from mains power.

The only disappointments are that the phone uses Sony’s proprietary flash memory formats and its own, proprietary headphone connector preventing use of regular 3.5mm headsets.

Verdict

Sony Ericsson seems to have thought quite carefully about what people want from a cameraphone and done its best to oblige both in terms of hardware controls and software extras. It is the imaging extras as much as the raw megapixels that should justify the purchase of this handset. Even without those this is a neat, tidy and very impressive 3G handset.